Lillian Geist closed the distance across the office toward Halle in a matter of seconds. They had the same Plot Armor, but I had to imagine that hers was more geared toward melee than Halle’s.

“You did this to me!” she screamed. “Tell me why!”

She grabbed him and quickly threw him toward the water fountain in the corner of the room. As she had said, the treatment Halle gave her did not make her beautiful, but it did make her strong.

As the fight bore on, the chorus of frogs in the distance grew closer. They had found their way here from the emergency room area. It was very polite of them to wait until just after Lillian’s reveal and speech.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” Willis screamed to us.

Mystery or no mystery, the Win Condition of this storyline was Escape the Fray, and we… had only gone further into it.

“Come on, Isaac,” Cassie said. She was trying to sound gentle and encouraging, but the adrenaline made the words come out through tears. “We just need to go a little further; get up.”

Isaac wasn’t going to get up. He wasn’t dead, but his Dead indicator on the red wallpaper was blinking faster and faster.

He tried to speak. He couldn’t.

Lillian continued to beat on Dr. Halle, who had taken the scalpel from his pocket—the same one he had used to cut the ribbon earlier—and was wielding it at her in vain.

“Are you going to mess my face up?” Lillian said with a laugh.

She backhanded him. He dropped the scalpel.

Then, she reached over to the fountain and pressed the switch to open the secret staircase.

“Please,” Halle said softly.

He wasn’t going to survive. I had gotten a glimpse of what this scene was titled on the script before it had been taken away. It was his staircase death.

What I didn’t know was that this scene had one last twist to throw.

As Kimberly and I tried to help Isaac get up before the frogs arrived, I heard a scream from the entrance of the room.

It was one of the Malformed Hybrids. Then another and another until a half dozen or so arrived. The woman with the feathers, the various amphibian hybrids, and a man who looked like a warthog all came with their eyes fixed on us and Lillian. Their Plot Armor was higher than I was expecting, almost as high as mine.

Halle had a trope that summoned protectors when the players or an ally attacked him.

This meant that Carousel counted Lillian as our ally. His trope had been triggered.

The warthog rammed Willis before he could respond.

If I were to guess, this fellow might have been the guy who carried Isaac off through the tunnels when he was attacked on Bobby’s orders. He was certainly big enough, with huge muscles and tusks protruding from his mouth.

The warthog turned and started to run after me. I got ready to dodge. My high Hustle would help me there.

But it didn’t even get to that.

Antoine fired two shots at him. The warthog didn’t seem to feel it but did decide to target Antoine instead of me. Antoine then jumped up and over Halle’s couch to evade him. When the warthog charged again, Willis had regained his composure and fired one shot into the beast’s leg, dropping him to the floor and another in his skull for good measure.

The woman covered in feathers was down on the ground asleep before I even saw what happened to her. Kimberly had injected her with a heavy dose of Halle’s sedative as she attacked.

While the hybrids were technically targeting me because of my low PA, they didn’t seem shy about aiming at the others. After all, it would look weird if they didn’t.

A man with a snakeskin pattern on his face and a long neck bit at Cassie, who fell to the ground as she tried to back away. Then, the snake turned to me and bounded for me, only to fall as Cassie grabbed its ankle.

Bobby was protecting his fake NPC wife. He barked at the hybrids, who strangely seemed to understand him and would respond in their animal tongues.

As they moved through the room, they got closer to me, but they also got close to Lillian, who grabbed Halle’s head and bashed it into the fountain.

They must have been restricted from helping him until that point because as soon as she picked him up by the hair, two of the hybrids tackled her. Halle dropped to the ground.

The whole thing was chaotic. The camera would have actually been on Lillian and Halle. Everything else was background.

Lillian threw the hybrids aside with a few brutal swings and a banshee scream.

She went back to Halle, who was trying to crawl away and picked him back up by the hair.

“No more promises from you,” she said. She threw him down the steep stairway into the tunnels.

He hit the stairs, bones audibly crunching the whole way down. For a moment, we went Off-Screen for what was likely a close-up of Halle’s broken body at the bottom of the stairs.

That gave me an idea for how I might use my Cutaway Death trope. A fall into darkness was an ideal setup.

Soon after, the energy in the room changed.

The hybrids’ PA dropped down five or more points a piece. Halle must have been dead. His protective buff had vanished.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

The hybrids looked down the stairs as if in mourning, but they didn’t have much time to be sad because the frogs arrived.

The frogs didn’t discriminate, but they did abide by their rules. In a Fight or Chase Scene, they attacked the characters with the lowest Hustle.

Suddenly, I wasn’t the person in the most danger.

Some of the hybrids were. Once that they had lost their buffs, frogs the size of refrigerators began jumping through the large plate glass windows separating Halle’s office from the rest of the floor and attacking whoever was nearest them.

Those most in danger were the hybrids, Bobby’s wife, and Bobby himself because he was Hobbled and had terrible Hustle.

The enemy of our enemy was our friend. Those of us in the room started closing in on each other. Cassie, Isaac, and I had managed to get separated from the others in the large office.

Cassie continued to try to get Isaac up, but he was a goner.

A message appeared on the red wallpaper from Dina that read, “Tunnels are Off-Screen.”

That was all the confirmation I needed.

“We have to find a way out of here,” he said.

Isaac’s Dead indicator flickered even faster. He was almost gone. Cassie was trying to invoke her Anguish trope to stave off his death, but that wasn’t working. She cried to the heavens, saying, “I can feel your pain, Isaac, but we just have to go a little further.”

She couldn’t feel his pain because he didn’t. Between his Bloodloss Delerium trope and the sedative, he didn’t have pain to share, and if he did, this was not a good moment for her to share it. She was too flustered to set up the power correctly.

A frog swallowed the snake man and started choking on him. That didn’t last long, though, because the frog managed to bite the hybrid in half.

“There’s an exit that way,” Donna, Bobby’s fake wife, said to him as more frogs jumped into the room. She pointed in the direction of the exit. “I saw it when I was looking for you.”

“Show us the way,” Willis said.

He ushered Antoine, Kimberly, Dina, Bobby, and Bobby’s wife out of the room.

Willis knew his job was to help us escape, even if that meant leaving a few of us behind. He couldn't risk the survival of the group for a few injured players. If the others survived, we would, too, eventually.

That was good for them, but they were closer to the exit. Cassie, Isaac, and I were trapped. Two frogs had found their way in and were scrambling over furniture toward Isaac.

Cassie threw her body over him to protect him.

She didn’t need to in the end.

“Halle always said you creatures were the solution to all my problems,” Lillian said, speaking to the nearest frog. It was large and had been used to grow human faces just like the giant frog had been.

She walked slowly toward it and fell to her knees.

The frog wrapped its enormous tongue around her and swallowed her in one bite.

The other frog hopped closer to Cassie, Isaac, and me. Its eyes were not frog eyes—they were human. Its teeth were human, and its toes were also human.

We couldn’t get past it to get to the others. Luckily, the frog that killed Lillian was still… working on her, so to speak, so it wasn’t interested in us.

The other was, though. With no one else in the room, it would target Cassie and Isaac.

I had to make a decision, and I already knew what it was. Isaac was as good as dead, but Cassie didn’t have to be.

“I’ll take Isaac,” I said. “You escape and catch up with the others.”

“No,” she said. “I can’t leave him.”

“Cassie,” I said. “You have to trust me. Our best chance is if you run. Let me take care of that thing.”

“I don’t know who dies next,” she said. “I tried to pay attention, but I was scared.”

I grabbed her shoulder as the frog hopped closer. It looked jealous that it hadn’t gotten to eat Lillian.

“I know who dies next,” I said. “And it’s not you. Go help the others.”

I pushed her away from us as the frog jumped.

The frog hit me, but it was more interested in Isaac. I figured it would be.

I pulled Isaac away from it as it tried to scoop him up in its jaws. This creature tripped over its loose skin as it pursued us. All of the frogs tripped over their loose human skin, but it never seemed to slow them down. It was just shocking imagery.

Cassie looked like she wanted to help, but I screamed, “Go!”

She ran. The others couldn’t have gotten too far. I still heard gunshots right down the hall.

I pulled Isaac away from the frog. I didn’t want to go too fast, so I baited it to make sure it didn’t go for Cassie.

I inched closer to the entrance to the secret staircase.

With Isaac lying on the ground, painting the tiles with his blood, it was difficult for the frog to get at him.

If the frog managed to get its tongue on Isaac, he was doomed. Selfishly, I knew that might not be the worst outcome. The frog would be distracted long enough for me to escape. Besides, it was possible Isaac wasn’t going to live long enough to see The End anyway.

But I couldn’t just feed him up to the beast, not when there was another way. I couldn’t help him live for long, but I didn’t need to see him eaten either.

I pulled Isaac down into the secret staircase, leaving him balanced on some of the steps below.

He mumbled something, but I couldn’t understand it.

I quickly reached up and grasped the switch on the fountain and triggered it so the secret opening would close.

I had to time things right.

The frog jumped. At first, I thought it wouldn’t get through. The entrance was closing fast, and the frog was large, but as it extended out for the jump, its body stretched thin enough to get through the hole. I had hoped it would just get close enough that I could feign being knocked down the stairs to my "death".

It hit me like a freight train.

I screamed. I had to.

The frog and I were tumbling backward down the staircase. I couldn’t tell if we hit Isaac as we went down.

It wasn’t perfect, but I succeeded at my main goal technically.

As I fell down the stairs, I noticed I was officially Written Off on the red wallpaper.

Cutaway Death sent us all Off-Screen.

My death had been implied by being attacked by the frog. I hadn’t expected the full-on tackle. I had hoped it might try to wrap me in its tongue, which would then get caught by the closing secret door, but that was too much to hope for.

I landed hard on the ground. I was already mutilated because of my hand surgery, but even if I hadn’t been, I would be now.

One of my arms was bent the wrong way. Pain surged through my body. Breathing hurt. My head hurt. I was bleeding.

I looked around. I could hear the frog somewhere. Would it be too much to ask that it be injured, too?

If it was, I couldn’t tell. It was dark at the foot of the stairs.

I thought quickly and crawled my way to the edge of the walkway where the ravine of rushing water waited bellow.

I couldn’t see very well, so I just listened.

I hoped the frog wouldn’t go back upstairs to look for the dying Isaac. Cutaway Death implied some fight was meant to occur after it triggered, a fight with me.

I tried to let my eyes adjust. I stood tall. I took off my hoodie quickly and draped it over my front.

Sure enough, the frog’s tongue shot at me, stuck to my hoodie, and ripped it away.

I heard an odd coughing as it tried to swallow it.

Then, I heard a sound I couldn’t place—a slap.

Next was a shuffle as the frog leaped at me. I waited until the last second and dodged out of the way.

The creature sailed past me and fell into the raging stream. I didn’t know how strong frogs were at swimming, but this frog had human toes, so I had assumed it wouldn’t be too good at it. It also had human eyes, which is why I surmised it couldn’t see in the dark.

The only thing it lacked was a human brain, so it fell for the oldest trick in the book.

I collapsed to the ground. The cool, damp concrete was oddly comfortable because I was so exhausted.

I had to check on Isaac. I crawled over, letting my bad arm rest.

I looked up the stairs. In the dim light, I couldn’t see him, but I could detect him on the red wallpaper.

He was Written Off, but he wasn’t dead. Not yet. Luckily, he was Unconscious. I would need to check on how being Written Off affected death.

All I had to do was wait for my friends to get away, and I would be fine. We all would be.

A light appeared against the wall next to the stairway. It was from a lighter.

Illuminated in an orange flicker was the bloodied face of Dr. Howard Halle.

“Mr. Lawrence,” he said. His words sounded labored, his breathing shallow. “How do you know my son? What do you know about Simon Halle?”